1. Based on the resources available, how might Dafna organize this activity?
Considering that there are limited equipment (5 guitars and 4 iMac computers) Dafna may want to ask students if they could bring their own musical instruments, and electronic equipment (i.e. laptops, camcorders, cameras, smartphones, etc) to work on their music videos during alloted class time and also encouraged to work on their projects on their own time as homework. As well, students could still be given the option to borrow the existing equipment but they would need to arrange a schedule so that the resources would be used in a fair and equitable manner. Dafna’s students could choose to work in groups and they could decide amongst themselves the different roles they would play a part of (i.e. film director, guitarist, camera person, etc). Perhaps, Dafna may need to let the students know about the different types of roles that students’ could contribute and tie this into her lesson plan. The lessons Dafna’s organized so far including camera basics, shooting video, editing video, and post-production can be taught at the same time while students work on their projects so that it helps them complete their music videos. Depending on students’ varying levels of expertise, they could also scaffold their mutual learning.
2. How might she disseminate the music videos, once created?
Dafna could use YouTube to distribute and share the music videos. Students could have the option of changing their privacy settings so that the videos are not publicly available, and they can alter their comments settings. If she has a course site like Moodle or WebCT Vista or even a class website, students could have the option of uploading their videos as an assignment and/or sharing their music videos on the discussion forums as a link and/or file attachment. Dafna’s students could also be provided the option of using tools like Animoto to create and share their music videos. One of the important considerations for disseminating the music videos would to obtain proper permissions (from students, parents, school administration) to ensure that all parties involved provide their informed consent. Additionally, Dafna may want to consider adding extra lessons into her music video activity which covers the terms of service agreements for different social media sites that they may be considering using to create and disseminate their music videos so that her students have a solid understanding of the implications of sharing digital media online. Related lessons could cover privacy concerns, intellectual property rights and copyright issues. Students would also need to consider their target audience (presumably the class) and the medium that they wish to share their music videos in.